This is my seventh term in cegep. I have taken so many courses, seen so many teachers that I can not remember all their names, all their faces or what they were saying. It could be tempting to think a human brain such as mine can’t memorize all the details of the original, heteroclit and marvelous personnalities of my flock of mentors, but in facts, this memory hole is mainly caused by the fact that all cegep teachers act, volontarily or not, from pre-defined templates. Those attitudes towards a class or during one on one conversations with students can mainly be classified into three categories : the normative-and-boring one, the too-friendly-to-be-self-confident one and the controversialist-and-convinced-of-his-at-least-special-opinions one.
I don’t know why, but teachers that really care about the regulation always happend to be so boring that aften fifteen minutes of powerpoint reading, with a monotone or nasal voice, all students hope for the break, while adding the last touches to doodles in their notebooks. Everybody should always know that showing up five minutes late one morning to the course of this kind of teacher will lead to be hated for the rest of the term, with no parole. The same phenomenon happends with all the « I lost my USB key », « I just puked, can I leave?» and « I’m having a mononucleosis » situations. Students have to follow the rule. If they don’t, here will be consequences, except in extremely serious situations, wich includes exclusively atomic bombs, aliens and snow days, if snow is replaced by peanut butter. On the other hand, any student showing up to every single course, not sleeping in class and not insulting the teacher to his peers while he’s just behind his back will be paid by affection that shall never be expressed, because there are few of them, and because they are precious.
This kind of teacher is almost the exact opposite of the next category. The teachers of the very special club of friendship tend to be expressing their real or fake love to every single student in an inexpected way. This all starts slowly. Those teachers usualy take fifteen minutes to explain that plagiarism is forbidden when they read the course plan : they wanna make sure that there is no misunderstanding. They would be so sad to punish someone that only missed the part where it’s written that they can’t copy and paste wikipedia. Those teachers talk a lot about themselves. Students know what they ate for breakfeast, the name of their cat and everything about their love life (or more then what they would like to know). Before anyone knows it, they are trapped in a corridor in a creepy scene with the enhtusiastic indivual, who is calling students by their names (or, worse, their nicknames) and asking them about their love life. They try to know the soul of every young people, to understand them, to help them in their developpement. Of course, then, young people feel obligated to answer. This kind of relationship garantees a VIP pass to the world of irresponsability, works given late (or not at all) with suspicious alibis and guilt for lying to this poor teacher that is only trying to be loved by his students. Popular psychology would make a cheap analysis about those people’s lack of self-confidence, but what students want to know is that this need of approval usualy leads to a 86% for everyone.
The last catergoy of teachers is just incredibly strange. These are typically old, absolutely not objective, arrogant to people that disagree with them (wich often means all the other teachers of the department), sticking to a very particular ideology and really, really interesting. They are so passionate that every single student, for three hours a week, wants to believe anything they’re saying, even if sometimes it makes absolutely no sense. They love debate, especially when they win. They also often have particular assesment methods such as 100% for anyone that actually does the project. Those teachers obviously give a show; everything, from their mimcry to the vocabulary they use, is calculated to impress. Therefore, they don’t feel the need to really talk to their students when they are alone with one of them. This can be explained by the fact that, in those teachers’ vision, students are a bunch of ignorant that don’t deserve attention or interest.